Haleema Shakur Still

But then we spoke to doctors in other countries across sub-Saharan Africa, doctors in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

So of countries around the world where they felt postpartum hemorrhage led to death in their women.

Oh, it was absolutely amazing.

I can still remember the day when the results came out and we saw that in addition to everything else, you know, standard care that women were already being prescribed, tranexamic acid sort of reduced the risk of women bleeding to death overall by about a third.

Wow.

And later on, when we looked at time to treatment,

If women received treatment within the first 15 minutes or so, you could reduce their risk of bleeding to death by about 70%.

And with every 15 minutes you delay, you lose 10% of the benefit.

So this is why we really need to intervene very, very early if we're going to save as many lives as possible.

The first woman trial raised an awful lot of questions.

When we saw that tranexamic acid was beneficial, the first question we wanted to ask was, if it can treat postpartum hemorrhage, can it prevent postpartum hemorrhage?

especially in women with high risk of postpartum hemorrhage, like women with anemia.

And what about getting tranexamic acid into use in the community to make sure women could benefit?

What about finding alternative routes for giving tranexamic acid?

Because we had given it in the first woman trial as an intravenous drug.

What about giving it in different forms that's easier to give like an intramuscular injection or in tablet form, liquid form?

So we had all of these questions that we wanted to ask.

In the woman trial, we only gave tranexamic acid intravenously.

that has many limitations because even in hospitals, many midwives and nurses aren't allowed to give intravenous drugs.

Only doctors are allowed to give intravenous drugs.